www.greenbuildermag.com 07.2012
PHOTO: FLICKR / TED MCAVOY
SPECIAL REPORT THE COST OF DEPENDENCY
fi nd it harrowing. Looking down through the metal grid at my feet, I can see the the sterile outdoor furniture in the narrow greenspace between buildings. I’m reminded of the science fi ction settings in the 1970s movie, Logan’s Run. In that fi lm, people are not allowed to grow old. Instead, they’re killed off to make way for the young. An apt metaphor. This land used to be farmland and a priory,
so I’m told. How did it happen? Talking to a mid-30s Irishman named Nick
at a train station near Elm Park, he lays it out for me. “People hadn’t had money for so long here, they just went crazy,” he says. “Instead of buying one house, they’d by two houses and three cars. It was like they were rewarding themselves for all the years of having nothing.” Developers also binged, without really considering who would
buy their cookie-cutter homes in sprawling subdivisions. When the bubble burst in 2008, most found themselves deep in debt, embarassed by their blind optimism.
Aſt ershocks The housing collapse, however, may turn out to be the least of Ireland’s future troubles. During those boom times, the country did almost nothing to break its dependency of foreign sources of energy or to create new industry. An island nation, Ireland has few energy sources of its own. The country imports 85% of its
Goodbye, Peat
With the advent of mechanized harvesting, Ireland’s native fuel source will be exhausted in 20 years or less. Peat logs (above) have provided warmth in Irish homes for centuries.
natural gas from the UK, plus all of its fuel oil. About 12% of homes are heated with peat, a native source of energy for centuries. But that’s coming to a rapid end. Bord na Móna, Ireland’s biggest peat harvester, has liter-
ally mapped the entire country’s peat supply. They’re not guessing. They can see the end. “We know there’s a limited supply of peat left,” notes
Gerry O’Hagan, director of marketing for Bord na Móna, “We have maybe 20 years left. Then it’s all gone. We used to employ 12,000 people. Now we employ about 1,200.”
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